Slowear | Focus on What You Know.

My whole life my father has done his best to drill certain lessons into me, to pass along some of his hard won knowledge to make my journey wiser and easier than his. As I started building a business he was always tell me to “focus on what you know,” a lesson that has served me well over the years. It is also a concept I subscribe to in general. To do what you do best. This concept is also something in practice at a company I have become very interested in, Slowear.

With all of my trips to Italy this year I fell in love with the set-up and execution of Slowear. To better understand the concept I pulled some info from the company website:

We believe that the only way to do something well is to have the right expertise. Thatâ€™s why the four brands that make up the group â€“ Incotex, Zanone, Glanshirt and Montedoro â€“ are all founded on the principle of specialization.

The umbrella brand “Slowear” encompasses the four main aspects of a man’s wardrobe (they also sell women’s clothes) through four individual labels that each focus on different product categories. The pants for Slowear are produced by Incotex (who is highly regarded as one of the best pant makers in the world), Zanone makes the knits, Glanshirt the shirts and Montedoro the jackets. It is sort of like a co-op of four old complimentary companies that got together to pool resources and present a unified collection. Under this sort of arrangement each can focus on what they do best and at the same time avoid pushing into areas of the business outside of their expertise. It’s a wonderful concept, and as mentioned earlier, one that resonates with me on many levels, as a consumer and as a business person.

Slowear has a few stores in Italy and one in Paris, which doesn’t do much for anyone that lives here in America. But much to my pleasure I learned recently that Slowear will have a big presence at Barneys New York this coming fall. That makes Slowear one of the many cool brands that I have come across recently that will be newly available at Barneys later this year. Have to give the people over there credit for their focus. [Slowear]

Looks great! How is the sizing though? According to Mr. Porter the knits run a bit small. Does the same go for the jackets?

Samon August 18, 2011@ 5:15 AM:

What a good idea to combine to pool strengths, clicked through to the site to look at the fall and winter collection definitely be interesting to see what they get in Barneys as their website is a little hard to use.